Humanize Me

No defaults. That's how Dedeker Winston, and her romantic partners Jase and Alex, see the foundation of their relationship structure: conscious, intentional choice around a lifestyle that works for the people involved in it, rather than defaulting to the monogamy (or serial monogamy) of our culture. As a former evangelical Christian, Dedeker not only left behind her faith but also many of the ideas based on it, like its messages about sex and relationships.

It's a line Bart Campolo uses a lot in this podcast and elsewhere, that the essence of life is cultivating loving relationships with other people. Today's question asks how to begin the process of doing that, including the line, 'I’m never sure what he means or what I’m supposed to do.' Bart borrows heavily from Dale Carnegie's classic advice, which he uses to break it down to a single, basic point.

It's often noted that Alcoholics Anonymous sounds like a religious movement, with its appeal to a 'Higher Power'. But Joe C. is the founder of a group called AA Beyond Belief, which he says exists to provide a space for AA agnostics, atheists and freethinkers worldwide. Bart Campolo has wanted to have a conversation with a secular person deep in the AA world for a long time, and Joe C. is that person! Many people have been helped and find their community in groups like his, and Bart wanted to explore how it looks for Joe, people in recovery and those in his group in particular.

Bart Campolo thinks his kids are the best in the world. Well, not objectively speaking, right? Well, sort of! I mean, he really prefers his kids to your kids. But he hopes you do too. Is that right? Is that okay? And is there any problem with that sort of 'us-them' mentality?

It's not a term most people use every day, but street epistemology is a thing. Anthony Magnabosco is one of its more prominent ambassadors, largely because he routinely captures his efforts on video and posts them on the internet. What is street epistemology? It's a conversational tool which uses Socratic questioning to help people expose the underlying methods by which they arrived at their beliefs, thereby subjecting those beliefs to scrutiny. Examples of Anthony at work can be found on YouTube, and the website can be found at StreetEpistemology.com.

This week's question comes from a listener who has a very difficult time being alone. 'When my girlfriend goes away on business trips,' he writes, 'I experience a ton of anxiety. And it isn't that I'm jealous of her - I'm I'm totally glad that she's having these experiences - but I get really anxious and my tendency is to want to immediately fill that space with with someone so that I don't have to have that negative feeling of being all alone, which I really hate. Is there something wrong with me?'

Curating peoples' secrets. It's a decidedly odd vocation, but Frank Warren has been doing it for a long time now through his ever-popular online art project, PostSecret.com. People anonymously send Frank their most intimate, private, beautiful, scandalous, horrifying, amazing, unspoken thoughts on postcards (yes, through the mail!) and Frank posts a new batch of them every Sunday on the site.

In this episode Bart takes a question that, he joked upon hearing it, may easily have come from his Christian father: 'What is the basis for your morality?' And why?

Charles Vogl helps leaders transform loneliness and separation into connection and belonging. His book, The Art of Community, is the book Bart Campolo says he always wished he had to recommend to people who wanted to build their own groups and nurture them.